Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb

Tuesday 2nd September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I am very sorry I was not here earlier today when Clause 33 was debated. The Green Party has had a very exciting morning electing a new leader, and that is where I was. I very much hope I am not going to make a Second Reading speech, but with so many amendments in the Bill, it is at times hard to see the way forward and to follow through a clear line. So I am going to make a speech, and I hope not to make too many more during the course of the Bill, however many amendments I have tabled.

I declare an interest as a grandmother of three home-educated children, all with special educational needs; two are now studying at colleges in Cambridge and the other is making short films about autism. So my experience tells me that school is not suitable for all children. Not all children can find a suitable school and you do not need to be wealthy to create a very rich educational learning environment out of school.

I, like many noble Lords, have had quite a lot of emails on this topic and I sympathise strongly with parents and grandparents of children with neurodiversities. Home education can take on myriad forms that are far removed from the classroom but are, none the less, educational, informative and far better suited to neurodiverse minds. Neurodivergent children are often repeatedly failed by the state school system, but the truth is that every child deserves a tailored education. Parents with the time and inclination to provide their children’s education know that no teacher can possibly have their child’s interest as much at heart as they do.

The Bill reads as if school is the safest, best place for all children to be. For many, that is simply not true. In fact, for many children school is a hostile environment. By making home education harder for parents, we are discouraging them from doing what is best for their child and for many others. Home educators give up their working lives to improve the lives of their children; to ask them now to continuously justify that choice and to make it even harder by adding bureaucratic hoops and hurdles is not in the best interests of all these children. You do not have to specifically disallow home education to make it unworkable, and home educators believe that this register will place an unworkable administrative burden on families.

I also believe that there is an inaccurate conflation of home education with a safeguarding risk. Evidence shows that children at risk are usually already known to social services, so home education is not the source of that risk. Subjecting home educators to intrusive monitoring is neither justifiable nor helpful. We need to improve children’s social care and to support action, not just documentation, for those children who are at risk, but we do not need another diversion targeting huge swathes of decent people and ignoring those in real need.

Setting up a register for children whose parents are not doing anything illegal or dangerous, requiring the collection of a significant volume of personal, sensitive and often impractical information from home-education families, is discriminatory. We should be supporting people to home-educate their children, not criminalising them.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly on a few of the amendments. First, Amendment 270 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Wei, should be considered. It actually happens with one local authority, which gets together home educators to share good practice and their experiences, but it should not be statutory, because it requires a considerable amount of organisation in terms of local authorities. However, if home educators in a particular area are working with a local authority that wants to do this, I would not be opposed to that. It might happen formally or informally, but it certainly should not be statutory.

I also think that the voice of the student is important. One of the concerns that I have always had with home education is that it is not just about education, it is about socialising. You have to work very hard to ensure that children and young people who are home educated have the important socialising that they need, but, again, this could happen organically or informally. It is not something that we should just ignore, but it cannot be a statutory provision.

Again, on Amendment 280, I think most local authorities would want to have the information from parents just once a year. I do not see a situation where they would not want that, unless there was “cause”, as the amendment states. Local authorities would want very much to get that information on one particular occasion and that is it, done and dusted, for that period of time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

There are quite a lot of tweaks in this section, which suggests that it is perhaps not quite right and that it needs to be rewritten in some ways.

We heard from the noble Lord, Lord Storey, just now that school is a very safe place, but I am sure he is well aware that school is not a safe place for everybody. Young people get bullied and it can be extremely distressing for some children, specifically if they have prior trauma, special educational needs or unmet needs, or have never attended school. There are all sorts of people for whom school is not the best and safest environment. I am trying to protect families who have already indicated that school is not meeting their child’s needs.

I hope we understand that local authorities sometimes judge in a completely erroneous way what families are doing with home education. We have discussed this, but I think Clause 32 is perhaps not fit for purpose.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

Truth be known, I struggle with the whole issue of attendance orders. Of course we want as many of our children as possible to be regular attenders at school or an education setting. When they are not at school, they are not learning—apparently. However, there are all sorts of reasons—I have two relevant amendments, I think in this group, which highlight particular groups of children—for this. The issue of bullying in schools has been raised. That can have a huge effect on children, making them literally petrified to go to school. It becomes a vicious circle then, with the local authority taking action and issuing attendance orders. There are also children with special educational needs. I had a pupil who had an absolute phobia of school attendance—I almost could not believe it. His mother, a hospital nurse, had to drag him to school every day. The whole thing was a constant battle. We have to think very carefully about this. There are certain groups of people for whom waving the stick of an attendance order is not the right approach. We have to look at other ways of increasing school attendance, and we have to be mindful of the situation they are in.

I always believed that parents who took their children on holiday during school time were wrong to do so. However, I reflected that the quality time they may have with their parents—often, perhaps more importantly, their dad—was hugely beneficial for them as a family, and that they learned so much as well. I hope we think this through very carefully before we enact it on Report.

Schools Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, sort of said “all home educators” and I briefly want to say that that is not the case. Some home educators feel threatened by a number of people in their organisation, particularly a number of ex-home educators who are running and providing services. I am happy to show the noble Baroness the evidence for that privately.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I did not say “all”. I am well aware that there are others, but I did not say “all”.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

The noble Baroness said “home educators”. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, corrected by saying “some home educators”, but the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said “home educators”. When she said that, it indicated to me that she was talking about all home educators.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I am really sorry; the noble Lord is going to have to check this in Hansard. I have my copy and that is not what I said.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

Let us agree to differ until we see Hansard.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

No—the noble Lord is wrong.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

If I am wrong, I am wrong and will apologise, but I make the point quite strongly that a large number of home educators are getting on with home educating. Within the home education movement, there are home educators who are behaving in an unacceptable way. In the first debate we had—I do not think the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, was with us—we all agreed, or the feeling of the debate was, that we need to use language that brings home educators together and works with local authorities. That is really important.

I turn to the issue of school attendance, which, again, we discussed previously. Part of me asks that, if school attendance is important—of course it is; it is hugely important, and we want to make sure every child and young person is in school—what are the tools in our kit to ensure that it happens? It must be through encouragement, reward and so on. If that is the case, should we say that there should be no sanctions, and let us do it through all other means? If we want school attendance to thrive in our society, we should not be suggesting that parents be fined, taken to court or, as my noble friend Lady Brinton mentioned, criminalised. Should we have a serious discussion about doing away with all those sanctions? If so, we need to know the consequences. I prefer a carrot-and-stick approach, but the carrot should be the overriding way we encourage parents to ensure that their children are in school.